East and Southeast Asia

In June U.S. marines engaged Muslim guerrillas in combat in the Philippines for the first time. About 1,200 U.S. troops were in the country to train government forces to combat indigenous guerrilla movements and were given permission to assist Philippine troops in front-line operations against groups such as Abu Sayyaf.

Nearly 800 people were killed in the first six months of 2002 in fighting between Indonesian troops and the rebel Free Aceh Movement. The number of human rights abuses committed by both sides was reported to have soared.

A South Korean patrol boat was sunk in a naval clash with North Korea in June. The incident took place in a disputed part of the Yellow Sea and left 4 South Korean sailors dead and 19 wounded. More than 100 South Korean fishing boats operating in the area were evacuated. Following a period of increased tension between North Korea and the U.S., both sides announced the end of the 1994 agreed framework that saw North Korea forgo its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons in exchange for annual supplies of fuel oil and the construction of two modern nuclear power plants.

Africa

Hundreds of people were killed in fighting between Algerian government forces and Islamist rebel groups during the year. The government announced in February that it had killed Antar Zouabri, the leader of the Armed Islamic Group. Dozens of citizens were killed in bombings in July during celebrations of Algeria’s 40th anniversary of independence. In April the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague delimited a 1,000-km stretch of border between Ethiopia and Eritrea that the two countries had fought over in 1998–2000.

Angolan army troops killed longtime UNITA rebel leader Jonas Savimbi in February, a move that led to the signing of a peace accord between the two sides in April. (SeeObituaries.) The 27-year conflict was Africa’s longest civil war.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda signed a peace agreement in July to end the four-year war that had left an estimated two million people dead. Although there were outbreaks of fighting between local groups afterward, Rwandan and most Ugandan troops (who had supported rebels inside the country) pulled out of the DRC in October. Troops sent by Angola, Namibia, and Zimbabwe to aid the Congolese army were also repatriated under the arrangement. UN peacekeepers and about 1,000 Ugandan troops remained in the DRC to prevent fighting between local militia groups.

Uganda sent thousands of troops into southern Sudan in March to try to wipe out the Lord’s Resistance Army rebel group. At least 67 rebels were killed during a later raid, in June, which had the approval of the Sudanese government under an agreement signed in March.

Fighting broke out between government forces and rebels in Côte d’Ivoire in September. The civil war began when government forces crushed an attempted mutiny by elements of the army. Gen. Robert Gueï, the Ivoirian former military leader, was killed during the attempted mutiny. (SeeObituaries.) Hundreds of soldiers and civilians were subsequently killed on both sides. France sent several hundred troops to the capital, Yamoussoukro, and the main city of Abidjan in order to protect French and other foreign nationals.

Military Technology

For the first time ever, the U.S. Army shot down an artillery shell in flight by using a high-powered laser. The Mobile Tactical High Energy Laser, a joint project with Israel, was test-fired in November. An earlier version of the system had been used to shoot down Russian Katyusha rockets in 2000. A modified Boeing 747-400 jet carrying a laser capable of shooting down ballistic missiles in flight was flight-tested for the first time in July. The U.S. Airborne Laser (ABL) program envisioned a fleet of seven such aircraft to be part of the country’s defenses against ballistic missile attack. The test flight marked the beginning of accelerated development of a national missile-defense system that became possible once the constraints of the ABM Treaty had been removed. (SeeSpecial Report.)

The X-45A unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) made its first flight in May, reaching a maximum airspeed of 360 km/hr (195 knots) and an altitude of 2,275 m (7,500 ft). The UCAV would preclude the need to send manned aircraft on a range of combat missions. Advances in military capabilities were sometimes little more than new applications of an existing technology; for example, in August Colombian troops seized nine remote-control model airplanes that rebel FARC troops were planning to fill with explosives.

The requirement for troops to fight for many hours and perhaps even days without a normal rest was seen as a key to success in future conflicts. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was developing drugs to help troops manage stress and sleep deprivation. The Continuous Assisted Performance program included research into areas such as altering the body’s metabolism so that it could use lipids as a source of energy rather than the normal carbohydrates.

Britain announced that its Defence Science and Technology Laboratory had developed an electrically charged hull to protect armoured vehicles against antitank grenades and shells. Known as the Pulsed Power System, the new armour used a highly charged capacitor to create a force field that would vaporize incoming metal objects before they could penetrate the vehicle’s hull.

Military Affairs: Year In Review 2002. (2015). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/869097/Military-Affairs-Year-In-Review-2002/228846/East-and-Southeast-Asia

Click anywhere inside the article to add text or insert superscripts, subscripts, and special characters.
You can also highlight a section and use the tools in this bar to modify existing content:

Add links to related Britannica articles!
You can double-click any word or highlight a word or phrase in the text below and then select an article from the search box.
Or, simply highlight a word or phrase in the article, then enter the article name or term you'd like to link to in the search box below, and select from the list of results.

Note: we do not allow links to external resources in editor.
Please click the Web sites link for this article to add citations for
external Web sites.